Bangert: Road plan payoff from our I-65 detour nightmare?

As Gov. Holcomb rolls out new roads plan, a look back at the pain of an I-65 detour that put bridge maintenance on the Indiana map

Emergency structural problems with the bridge over Wildcat Creek forced the state to close I-65 for five weeks in August and September 2015, forcing a detour around a 50-mile stretch of the interstate.(Photo: J&C file photo)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – How could we let the moment pass on the edge of West Lafayette, just one stop Thursday on Gov. Eric Holcomb’s three-day tour to showcase the first five years of projects in a 20-year state road plan, without a shout out to the Interstate 65 bridge over Wildcat Creek?

Two summers ago, the state had to close a 50-mile section of I-65, from Lebanon to Wolcott, after crews adding lanes to the bridge discovered that some of its support was sinking.

That forced the motoring public on the crowded interstate to fight through winding detours that overwhelmed rural towns, which were quickly littered with a collection of four-letter greetings hurled from driver’s side windows. For five weeks that went on.

That also launched a host of promises and plans – some rash, some half-baked, most simply dead on arrival – to deal with Indiana’s road and bridge maintenance.

So, Holcomb was asked within view of a stretch of U.S. 231 used in the state’s official I-65 detour, would the 20-year plan you helped usher through the General Assembly this year have happened without the lingering memory of the summer of 2015 nightmare on I-65? Was that the moment that brought us here today?

“I don’t like to look back,” Holcomb said in an Indiana Department of Transportation garage. “I like to look forward. I like to think we would have rose to the occasion regardless.”

Rising to the occasion, in this case, was no small feat.

The plan has INDOT putting $4.7 billion toward resurfacing 10,000 miles of road and repairing or replacing some 1,300 bridges over the next five years. Of that, Tippecanoe County will see that cash touch 192 miles of roads and 18 bridges. That doesn’t include the local share – still to be determined – from another $342 million the state will channel to cities and counties for other projects.

Dubbed the Next Level Roads Initiative, the state plan pays for the maintenance with, in part, a 10-cent-per-gallon increase in the gasoline tax.

“We did this because Hoosiers said they expected and deserved to have their roads maintained and that we needed to meet our needs,” Holcomb said. “I can’t think of many other states that could literally stand here today and say they’re going to pay for what they need and have the ability to do that, not through debt financing, not through borrowing – stealing from Peter to pay Paul. We’re paying for what we need now, into the foreseeable future for 20 years.”

State Sen. Brandt Hershman, R-Buck Creek, said the two-year-old questions about I-65 was fair. (“I had to deal with that detour daily, too,” said Hershman, whose usual I-65 exit at Indiana 25/Schuyler Avenue was one exit north of the Wildcat Creek bridge.) But it needed nuance that wasn’t always clear as the I-65 affair played out.

“People want to say it was a catalyst, but really it was a political football,” Hershman said. “People wanted to hit (then-Gov.) Mike Pence with it as hard as they could. Locally, we knew that. … At General Assembly, it didn’t affect much. It didn’t affect me, when it came to the larger picture on road funding.”

Pence, a year out from a re-election bid, did get hit hard. But the temptation to lay into an inattentive governor missed the point: The issues turned up because the state was actually correcting known problems on a bridge about to be widened.

But a 50-mile detour in bumper-to-bumper traffic gave plenty of time to go over revelations in August 2015 that 6.4 percent of INDOT’s inventory had been rated “poor” in their most recent inspections. At the time, INDOT officials predicted that the figure would grow to 12 percent in the next decade, assuming $274 million would be spent on bridge repair annually.

“I would say that had some impact,” West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis said. “I always say you don’t really know what the real problems are until someone starts telling you about it. When you have thousands of people a day on a detour telling you, ‘Hey, this isn’t working,’ I’m sure that message was heard in some way.”

In Dennis’ case, the detour forced a confrontation with INDOT. The city already had been lobbying for traffic signals at Cumberland Avenue and U.S. 231, to no avail. When the state put the detour through that intersection – and the number of crashes increased – Dennis closed Cumberland Avenue until INDOT installed lights.

On Thursday, Dennis said he, too, was looking forward at this point, with the prospect of millions of dollars in road money coming Greater Lafayette’s way.

“Let’s hope things like that detour are far behind us,” Dennis said.

Hershman said the I-65 detour might have brought things to the surface. But he contends that state lawmakers had been studying the matter for years.

“The public is really not looking at the underside of bridges, because why would they if they don’t have to?” Hershman said. “But from a state legislature standpoint, we just wanted to get the numbers right. We wanted to have people spend as little as possible. And we wanted to get a Grade A plan. That’s what you heard here today, I think.”

Hand it to Holcomb and the legislature for figuring out something. And not just anything.

As for the rest of us who bonded in some of the worst ways possible during those five weeks in summer 2015, we’ll always have the I-65 detour.